Baby come back, you can blame it all on me
I was wrong, and I just can’t live without you…

I would not like to live without Sedum anacampseros (a.k.a. Hylotelephium anacampseros) in my garden, which goes by the intriguing common name of “love restorer” or “lover-come-back.” The French call it orpin (sedum) des infidèles. This humble little plant supposedly has the ability to restore lost love, though I like it simply because it’s so incredibly charming.

The plant catches everybody’s eye when they visit my garden. It has a beautiful geometry to it. The stems radiate from the center, with smooth, succulent, blue-green leaves spiraling around them. The leaves get smaller towards the ends of the stems, like the scales on a pangolin’s tail.

Love restorer makes a tidy circle of foliage only a few inches tall and one foot wide, although sometimes a stem will root in the ground and start a new circle. In this way, it gradually covers more ground, but it is never aggressive.